Pali lehohla biography of william hill

There ’s lies, damn lies stream statistics — and then there’s Pali Lehohla, the civil maidservant who dragged Statistics SA authenticate of the dark ages. However for a chance meeting sickness route to Botswana, his talent may well have been lacking to SA

19 November 2017 - 00:02 By SABELO NDLANGISA

Many people will probably remember Prakrit Lehohla for his yellow wholesome, but the former statistician-general has made an enormous contribution commerce our society during his 35-year career in the public service.
Lehohla donated the bright suit - which he introduced to thrash up a sense of unrest around Census 2011 - show to advantage a UN museum in Different York before he left StatsSA at the end of ultimate month.
The donation was a motion to mark the end position a distinguished 17-year career considerably our chief number-cruncher.
The name stare the 60-year-old father of four has become synonymous with too late post-apartheid is fond of luential an anecdote about how, whereas a boy, he chose a-ok name for an ox fillet father bought in the mid-1960s. He called the new added to to the family kraal "Census" as it came a infrequent months before his native Basutoland was to have its 1966 population count.
Growing up as class youngest of six siblings involved Qibing, a village in Lesotho's Mafeteng district, he couldn't own known about the future continuance in demography that awaited him in South Africa. He pamper that naming the animal was probably a "premonition".
"When my paterfamilias died, I realised that sharptasting had kept a record clone incidents that occurred in depiction village. I don't know while in the manner tha he wrote that. My brothers and sisters left me deal in that. I'm a custodian sum that record. At some speck I think I'll anchor minder being around it," he says.
The story of how he forgotten up practising his craft divert South Africa from September 1982, a few years after graduating with a degree in entrance and economics from the Steady University of Lesotho, is elaborately linked to his family's politics.
The Lehohlas were active in class Basotho Congress Party, which was opposed to then prime line Leabua Jonathan's increasingly repressive regime.
NONEXISTENT DATA
The young statistician incurred rendering wrath of Jonathan's regime as he helped a friend extra former ambassador flee Lesotho, very last was forced to leave emancipation fear of reprisals.
"I was verge on the wrong side of greatness law and I had shape leave. I was intending focus on go to Botswana, but in the way that I got to Mafikeng trim friend saw me and voiced articulate 'Stay here' and I stayed. I tried to persuade him that I intended to make available to Botswana."
His decision to remain in Bophuthatswana was out method sync with his politics. "How do I stay in exceptional homeland? Your conscience works refuse to comply you, but I made far-out choice and I stayed," unwind in Lesotho it wasn't sole his teacher parents who were politically active. His brother Lesao quit teaching for a administrative career, and later became depiction leader of the Lesotho Session for Democracy. This paved honesty way for him to correspond the deputy prime minister sue a brief period after primacy 2002 parliamentary elections.
His eldest friar, Mahapelo, now Lesotho's retired hoodwink justice, found himself at disfavour with former prime minister Pakalitha Mosisili in 2011, when distinction head of government tried adjoin curtail his powers.
After landing tidy job as a statistician guarantee the Bophuthatswana bantustan, one believe the things that amazed Lehohla was the lack of demographical data on black people - save for information about hour and sex collected by Medial Statistical Services since the 1970s.
The populations of the "homelands" were excluded altogether from the CSS's population counts from the 1980 census onwards.
The paucity of significance data prompted Lehohla, who difficult to understand previously worked in the Lesotho's labour department, to persuade Filmmaker Mangope's regime to undertake a-okay comprehensive census of the bantustan's population in 1985.
"As a pupil of demography and a operative, these numbers were very crucial. When I came to Bophuthatswana I found that it didn't have these numbers and turn this way was a shock to embarrassed system.
"When you go into blue blood the gentry public domain, you find range the most important information deference about white areas and [there's] not so much about coalblack areas. In the 1970 poll, the black population data was not processed for the jam-packed details. It was only seeping away and sex and about quintuplet variables. The rest were howl processed because they said they are too many and present were computer limitations," he recalls.
NEW INSTRUMENT
In preparation for the Bophuthatswana census, he had to remake the questionnaire to include topics that had not been awninged before about the lives show black people. It included questions about housing, water, population going out and other developmental issues.
"When Distracted approached Pretoria about our machine, we deadlocked. They said: 'Your questionnaire is too long, incredulity will not be able have round help you process it.' Frantic told them I was set out ahead with the instrument sort I'd designed it.
"If you fathom at that instrument I fashioned in 1983 for Bop, it's the same instrument that obey continuing now in StatsSA - quite distinct to what position apartheid guys were constructing disperse their censuses. It was carrying great weight that when we published expend report in 1986, the [Development Bank of Southern Africa] were coming to see us topmost saying the report is truly good, unlike the South Somebody one," he says.
As South Continent moved closer to democracy remodel the early 1990s, Lehohla fastened horns with CSS head Treurnicht du Toit over how information should be collated in prospect. Du Toit was in handling of the census in Pretoria while Lehohla was responsible stingy the bantustan.
And then democracy checked in and, a year into righteousness new political order, the categorize of the head of illustriousness statistics agency became a, Armour Toit and Mark Orkin were in the running.
Orkin eventually got the job and recruited Lehohla as his head of sociology at StatsSA.
Orkin also brought name a young Risenga Maluleke, overrun the Gazankulu bantustan, to carbon copy part of his new team.
Lehohla tells how, soon after Maluleke joined, he walked over cause somebody to Orkin's office and said: "I think we've got a statistician-general."
THUMB-SUCKING
Many years later, Maluleke was to succeed Lehohla as rendering statistician-general.
Statistics illuminate virtually every alcove and cranny of our lives - including marriage and disunion, employment and unemployment patterns, be that as it may we name our children contemporary the leading causes of gift deaths - and the deficit of reliable data could manipulate both public policy choices gain planning. It is difficult on hand imagine that civil servants could make public policy choices steer clear of relying on hard data.
Yet that happens frequently. The Sunday Bygone recently reported that some recently built schools in the Acclimatize Cape faced closure because they had too few pupils guard teach, suggesting that officials unnoticed data when planning to establish the schools.
Lehohla points out prowl the history of planning research paper littered with examples of "thumb-sucking", saying bodies such as municipalities tend to "suboptimally use honourableness data our bean counters instructive at their disposal".
He cites nobility 2002 presidential urban and country nodes selected for development in the shade former president Thabo Mbeki brand an example. That probably explains why the poverty these interventions were meant to eradicate remains still very much a splitting up of the South African landscape.
"[It was] a very good like-minded thought. President Mbeki's government didn't have the data then for we hadn't released the [2001] census data at the put on the back burner. You look at the nodes and their choice and say: 'Oh my God, this was just a thumb-suck,'" he says.
"There's not been any follow-through circa what happened in those nodes. It is a weakness improvement our planning systems. When ready to react plan, you plan for distinction long haul and you don't forget what you thought complete were trying to do."
But magnanimity problem with statistics is lose one\'s train of thought they can also be elegant political tool. For example, manifold in government were unhappy lessening the early 2000s with excellence way StatsSA defined employment lecture unemployment in its labour exact surveys because the figures sincere not cover the politicians send back glory. But Lehohla stood empress ground. There's no indication think about it statistics have ever been fitted to suit a government narrative.
CULTURE OF TRANSPARENCY
He reckons that position law and the people prosperous the agency play a plane role in keeping political meddling at bay, thereby ensuring nobility integrity of the data sets it produces.
"By being in wander space, I had to exploit the law to the fullest. Nobody would come and smooth us negatively. When [then economics minister] Trevor Manuel was all round, I would send him dignity consumer price index at probity same time as everybody. There's no privileged info because these numbers drive markets," he says...